Leveraging Social Media Image Marketing Strategies

People are consuming a lot more visual imagery or information than they used to and we’ve seen that transition as sites like Instagram, as sites like Pinterest have become so popular. So I think that visual marketing or picture image marketing is an important part of one’s strategy today.

Visual mediums are appealing I think that, you know, you kind of have to look at your target market is before you can figure out exactly where you should be placing your images. You know, there’s always going to be a portion of your market that prefers to consume information visually. Just like we do stuff with video, we do stuff with podcast, do stuff with written blog posts.

There’s always going to be people who like imagery so that’s just one of the different ways that people learn so it’s good to consider for that alone. Then, in terms of distributing your content, there are sites out there like Pinterest, like Instagram. They are visual mediums so those are going to require you to have something visually appealing for you to even tap into that marketplace. And if you got you know, for example, a retail business, e-commerce kind of thing then like it’s a no-brainer.

You’ve got to be on Pinterest. If you’ve got an audience that’s primarily a younger market that you’re going after, then Instagram is a really great place for you to be because that is who is on that site and that’s who’s making up those demographic. So you know, you got to consider who your audience is as far as where you’re going to go to siphon traffic away.

Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook

Here’s an example that I saw last week that I thought was super interesting. The Pottstown Pennsylvania Police Department started using Pinterest to put pictures of the most wanted criminals in their area and they used it just like, here in the U.S. we used to put pictures of the most wanted up at the Post Office. Well, they don’t do that anymore. So now we’re doing it on Pinterest. At least this police department is. They actually were able to measure and saw an increase of I believe it was 57% of folks calling their tip line and saying “Hey you know, I know where that guy is!

You should come and get him.” So I was like, number 1, super impressed that the police department knew their numbers like that, like good on them. Then also, it was just a good example of how one can use these kinds of sites in ways that we don’t necessarily think of. Of course if you sell handbags, yeah go get a Pinterest account, like duh. But here’s a police department. If you’re in the Internet marketing space, what can you put on those kinds of sites that could appeal to people? Quotes. Inspirational Quotes are really, really, really big on Pinterest and actually on Instagram as well.

People love sharing that stuff. Statistics. Infographics. And then if you’re kind of branding yourself as a personality too, I mean a big part of social media is just that whole sharing you as a person, not just as that business person but your life as a whole. So you can use these image based sites to share other aspects of your life. You know, pictures of your cat, pictures of the coffee of you in the morning. That kind of stuff and people actually really do respond positively to it. I think that you do some of that yourself.

So people are responding to images even outside of say, the Pinterest or Instagram, the image-only sites. You’ve got to be using them on the other social media sites too because people’s response will positively to them.

Yeah, that is quite interesting. I think when I think about my own Facebook use, it’s 99% picture driven. Whether it’s a screenshot of something I think could be interesting or… and I also categorize them into sub-folders like action, people, food, coffee and I think by, or scenic. Those are sort of sub-categories and I noticed that some of them get a lot of good response. If I can somehow pull off an amazing sunset or cloud picture or whatever, a lot of people, I guess it’s a humanized sort of thing. People can relate to or put themselves in that moment.

Use image apps to edit texts

Actually, I’ve got a couple of really good ones bookmarked, that my team has been using. Let me pull one or two of these up for you guys. So, I’ve been using Photoshop, of course, to do your basic, like text over an image or a colour or something like that so you know just a quote or a stat, we do that. I do a lot of stuff with my iPhone, take pictures, put a filter in it on Instagram to make it look maybe a little bit more interesting and then put that on my Facebook fan page with a caption and to let people know what my thought process was when I did that. Also, there’s a lot of really cool little apps on Android and iPhone that will let you add text over your images so that your caption doesn’t become that important. So one of those that I’ve been using a lot of is called Over.

Pinterest is actually, if people are looking for traffic quickly, if it is a niche that we can work with at all in terms of the Pinterest audience, which most we can, but not all, we direct them to Pinterest over the other social media sites. Over your Facebooks, over your Google Plus, your Twitter, all that stuff because people are going to see actual click throughs and then those actual click throughs become sales at a higher rate than they do on the other social networks.

Statistically, of course not in every case but over the grand majority that’s what we found. Some things, some of the stats that are really interesting is that 70% of Pinterest users agree or 70% of surveyed Pinterest users agree that it is a place to get inspiration on what to buy. So people are literally collecting stuff that they want to buy later.

So that’s all for today. This is Kyle Sheridan. Hope to catch up with you again soon.